That current behaviour is extremely valuable.
It tells founders:
how important the problem is,
what customers already tolerate,
what they spend,
what they dislike,
what your startup must outperform.
A useful principle is:
Your competitor is not only another startup.
Your competitor is whatever the customer does today.
1. What Counts as an Existing Alternative?
An existing alternative is any current way customers achieve the outcome they want.
It may be:
a competitor’s product,
a spreadsheet,
email,
messaging apps,
paper records,
internal software,
a consultant,
additional employees,
manual checking,
doing nothing.
Founders often look only for companies selling a similar product.
That is too narrow.
If customers currently solve the problem with Excel, Excel is part of the competitive reality.
If they hire people to do the work manually, human labour is an alternative.
If they simply tolerate the problem, doing nothing is also an alternative.
2. Why Alternatives Matter
Existing alternatives answer an important question:
“What happens before our product exists?”
Suppose a startup wants to automate invoice follow-up.
Customers may already:
maintain spreadsheets,
send manual reminders,
check bank accounts,
message clients,
ask employees to follow up.
That reveals several things.
The problem already causes behaviour.
The customer has already created a system.
And the startup is not competing against nothing.
It is competing against that system.
3. Workarounds Are Customer-Built Solutions
A workaround is an imperfect method customers create because available options do not solve the problem well enough.
Common workarounds include:
Spreadsheet + Email + Reminder + Manual Check
or:
Paper records + Phone calls + Messaging groups
These systems may look inefficient to an outsider.
But they often survive because they are:
familiar,
flexible,
cheap,
already integrated into behaviour,
under the customer’s control.
Do not underestimate them.
A messy workaround can be surprisingly difficult to replace.
4. A Workaround Is Evidence
Suppose someone says:
“This problem is really annoying.”
That is useful.
But now suppose they:
spend five hours every week managing it,
maintain three spreadsheets,
assign an employee to monitor it,
pay for two separate tools.
That is stronger evidence.
Why?
Because behaviour shows that the customer is already paying a cost.
The cost may be:
Money
→ tools or labour
Time
→ repeated manual effort
Complexity
→ multiple systems
Risk
→ mistakes and missed tasks
The more costly the workaround, the more interesting the underlying problem may be.
5. Alternatives Reveal Customer Priorities
Watch what customers optimize.
Imagine two companies face the same reporting problem.
Company A
Uses a simple spreadsheet.
Their priority may be:
low cost + flexibility
Company B
Pays consultants to prepare reports.
Their priority may be:
accuracy + reduced internal work
The same problem can produce different alternatives because customers value different outcomes.
This helps founders understand what the market actually prioritizes.
6. Ask Why the Current Alternative Survives
Founders sometimes look at an old process and think:
“This is terrible. Customers will obviously switch.”
That assumption is dangerous.
Ask:
“Why has this method survived?”
Possible reasons:
it is free,
everyone knows how to use it,
it is flexible,
employees trust it,
changing would require training,
data migration would be difficult,
the problem is not painful enough,
existing tools are good enough.
A workaround can be inefficient and still be good enough.
That creates a real competitive barrier.
7. “Good Enough” Is a Serious Competitor
Imagine a startup builds a beautiful workflow platform.
The customer currently uses:
Google Sheet + WhatsApp + Email
The startup believes its platform is far better.
But customers ask:
Why should we migrate our data?
Why should employees learn another system?
Why should we pay?
What if the startup disappears?
Does this save enough time to justify switching?
The new product does not need to be slightly better.
It often needs to be meaningfully better.
A small improvement may not overcome the cost of change.
8. Study the Full Alternative Stack
Customers may not use one alternative.
They may combine several.
For example:
Current workflow
Lead arrives
→ entered into spreadsheet
→ salesperson receives WhatsApp message
→ reminder added manually
→ manager checks progress by phone
→ results copied into another report
This is an alternative stack.
The startup should understand:
where time is lost,
where errors occur,
what customers like,
what customers dislike,
which part creates the most pain.
Sometimes you should replace the whole workflow.
Sometimes only one weak step needs improvement.
9. Direct and Indirect Alternatives
Direct alternative
A product solving roughly the same problem in a similar way.
Example:
Your project-management software vs another project-management tool.
Indirect alternative
A different method producing the same desired outcome.
Example:
Your project-management software vs spreadsheets + messaging + meetings.
Indirect alternatives are easy to ignore.
But early-stage startups often compete more with existing behaviour than with another startup.
10. Doing Nothing Is Also Competition
Sometimes the customer’s current choice is:
“We will live with the problem.”
This matters.
Suppose your solution costs ₹20,000 per year.
The customer compares:
Buy your solution
against:
Continue tolerating the problem
If doing nothing is cheaper and the pain is weak, the customer may not switch.
So one of the most important competitors can be:
inertia
Inertia means the tendency to continue with the current state instead of changing.
11. Workarounds Reveal Product Requirements
Study what customers have built themselves.
Suppose users maintain a spreadsheet with columns for:
status,
owner,
deadline,
priority,
notes.
Those fields may reveal what matters in their workflow.
A workaround can function like an early product prototype created by the customer.
It can reveal:
essential information,
workflow order,
required flexibility,
collaboration needs,
reporting requirements.
Do not copy a workaround blindly.
Understand why each part exists.
12. Look for Workaround Friction
Ask customers:
Which step takes the most time?
Where do errors happen?
What gets forgotten?
What requires repeated follow-up?
Which tool frustrates the team?
Which step would you remove first?
What breaks as volume increases?
This helps identify the highest-value intervention.
The opportunity is often not:
“Replace everything.”
It may be:
“Remove the most painful bottleneck.”
13. Why Customers May Resist Switching
Even if your solution is better, customers may face switching costs.
Switching costs can include:
Financial cost
New software or implementation fees.
Time cost
Setup and migration.
Learning cost
Training employees.
Operational risk
Something could break during change.
Behavioural cost
People must develop new habits.
Integration cost
Existing systems must connect.
The greater these costs, the stronger your improvement must be.
14. A Practical Example
Imagine small retailers track inventory through spreadsheets.
A founder observes:
Current alternative
→ spreadsheet
Workaround
→ staff manually update quantities
Friction
→ updates are sometimes delayed
Consequence
→ inventory information becomes outdated
The wrong conclusion is:
“Spreadsheets are bad. Build an inventory app.”
A better investigation asks:
Why do retailers like spreadsheets?
What makes updating difficult?
Who updates the file?
How often does it become inaccurate?
What happens when it is inaccurate?
Would automation be valuable enough to justify switching?
The goal is not to defeat the spreadsheet.
The goal is to understand why customers use it and where it fails.
15. Alternative Analysis Framework
For every important alternative, examine:
What is it?
What does the customer use today?
Why do they use it?
Cost, familiarity, flexibility, availability?
What works well?
Do not assume everything is bad.
What fails?
Where is the friction?
What does failure cost?
Time, money, risk, opportunity?
What keeps customers there?
Habit, switching cost, trust, integrations?
What would make them change?
How much better would a new solution need to be?
This produces far better insight than simply creating a competitor-feature table.
16. Founder Decision
Before building, ask:
How does the customer solve this today?
What tools and people are involved?
What do they like about the current method?
Where does it fail?
What does that failure cost?
Why have they not changed already?
What switching costs exist?
What improvement would be meaningful enough to cause action?
Then observe real behaviour.
17. The Opportunity Signal
A potentially attractive pattern is:
Important problem
+
costly workaround
+
clear friction
+
weak existing alternative
+
real willingness to change
This does not guarantee your solution wins.
But it shows that the current system leaves room for improvement.
18. Remember This
Your startup rarely competes with nothing.
Customers already have:
tools
→ habits
→ people
→ processes
→ workarounds
→ inertia
The core principle is:
Understand the customer’s current solution before asking them to adopt yours.
A strong startup does not simply build something better.
It builds something valuable enough to make changing worthwhile.